I'm the Detroit bureau chief for Forbes, which means I spend most of my time covering the automotive industry. But I also keep an eye on the rest of America's heartland—where stuff is manufactured and grown. I've been on the auto beat for more than 20 years at Forbes, Business Week and the Detroit Free Press. At the Boston Globe, I rode the tech bubble for a while, but I found there's nothing quite as fun as the auto beat. Whether you drive a car or not, everyone has an opinion about cars or car companies. What's yours?

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions — because goodness knows, everyone seems to have an opinion on this one — but I find Broder’s response at least plausible. He was inexperienced with the car and relied on information from Tesla representatives, who it seems might have given him some bad advice. At the very least, I think Broder’s response shows that he was in constant communication with Tesla people throughout his two-day drive and he did not maliciously lie about his experience.

There are a couple of unanswered questions remaining, however, like why Broder cannot account for a discrepancy between the fact that he “recalled” setting the cruise control to 54 mph, yet Tesla’s logs showed he was traveling about 60 mph. And what effect, if any, did the car’s smaller, all-weather tires have on its performance?

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So your point is that these car is no good and can’t be used? I assume you also have a rotary phone, watch tv in black&white and use a Walkman. Evolve… Change…adapt don’t expect life to continue the same, there won’t be social security or lower taxes in the future either. there will be innovation though

What is your point Joanne? We have here a great rift, even tiff, between a struggling to survive electric car company and a journalist that despises them. Let those two fight, and figure, it out rather than pen some silly commentary noting a several of the more minor discrepencies between the two.

Broder is full of it. He’s just trying to get notoriety while the topic of Lithium Ion failure is hot. I got a kick out of how unknowledgeable the writer actually was about a vehicle he supposedly had driven according to Tesla’s instructions. Plus the fact that he didn’t realize that the car collects data about everything he did in the car… all in all it points to Broder being a bald face liar. “No Dad, Honest, I stayed below 55 all day!”

This is an interesting strategy by E.Musk, and it’s successfully churning up media noise. It’s no surprise that media employees can’t figure out how to handle an EV properly; if Broder really wanted an good test ride he should have taken a 10 year old with him to tell him how to do it. And Broder has to be a fool to not know that there would be a black box recorder in the vehicle. I think that Musk got the NYT to do just what he wanted, and Broder played right into it. Now Musk gets to show, in detail, how hard the Model S is to kill (even if you try) and the media is publishing it all for free.

The success of electric cars isn’t about the technology or the learning curve. It’s all economics. When the price of gas nears $5 a gallon electric cars will be golden again. But for now gas is cheap and electric cars are still a little ahead of their time.

Nonsense. Millions of people will charge up conveniently in their garages and enjoy the convenience of never going to the gas station while paying less for the miles in the fastest under 100k premium-performance sedan. They’ll simply keep the car charged up for long trips in Motor Trends Car of 2013. This car is still as cool today as it was last week.

…And you can’t keep pretending climate change is not a major consideration forever. You can close your eyes and pretend the elephant is not in the room; but the stinky waft of of the climate change elephant quietly permeates in, around, over, between every line of your writing. So continue ignoring the elephant at your own peril: Rhetoric like “aren’t ready for the mass market” is a kindergarten tactic in the world of new challenges we face globally.